UltraScenery - new territory [Commercial]
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There are products in the store that add clouds with geometry, either as billboards, sophisticated billboards, or actual volumes, so that may be something to look into. Of course, they add to the render times in exponential proportion to how good they look, so there's that...
A few of them are:
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-sky-pro
https://www.daz3d.com/cloudscape-creator-bundle
https://www.daz3d.com/hd-volumetric-clouds
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-clouds
Well, OK then. I fiddled. I could go on about the glut of information on the settings available, but then knowing what SS RGB Unit Conversion should be old hat & 2nd nature by now, right?
(Psst, I still haven't a clue, so if someone would enlighten...)
Thanx for the suggestions too which some are already on wishlist & others will get 'splored more later.
Anyway, my results:
Thanks for suggesting using an overcast sky with the PNW set. I gave it a try, too. I started with the render settings preset that comes with UltraScenery and turned Matte Fog on and set SS Haze to 10. I didn't render a "before" comparison image, though. I rendered with Draw Dome off and put an overcast sky image in the Environment backdrop. It looks appropriately gloomy to me. Here (Florida) when the sky is overcast, it is often just flat gray like that. In fact that is how it looked when I rendered this image.
These are two views of the same scene,
Those look quite nice. Which eco set did you use? Need to work in the Boston ferns as we know them around here. Been seen some things I never saw before & need to investigate. I was out of the area for 30 years...
The terrain was generated by the plugin - not World Creator. Initially you will be able to import height maps to shape the terrain but due to limitations in QT4.8 (that Studio 4.x is built upon) it can't import 16bit images so the terrains won't look great via that method. Daz Studio 5 should fix that problem so I will incorporate 16bit image map import after its release.
I used Pacific NW 2 and feature Stones 5.
Your train sets in US - Landscapes came out really great. After seeing them I grabbed the tracks, but have not yet rendered anything with them.
Here some more results with custom materials for the road:
See in my gallery for a list of all assets used!
That is interesting. It is nice to know that DS5 will bring some advantages to the table to compensate for all the broken plug-ins and scripts.
Another fabulous image! I love all the detail you add to your scenes. It really brings them to life. I often get lazy and render just the UltraScene LOL. Great work on the custom road and I see you used may favorite HDRI (Sunflowers). I've yet to find another that I like better, so I use it over and over. I like the warm light and the clouds.
I can't stop looking at this - it is so inviting! I'm really looking forward to your next one. I added a couple things to my wishlist, based on you excellent use of the items here. I gave you a well deserved "like" in the gallery.
There's something I'm not understanding with regards to Proxies & Instances in USC. I've a couple of trees I'd like to hide. In wiremode, I'm able to ID and track the offending tree's to their Proxys. I uncheck their respective Eyeballs & they in fact disappear in the Viewport, but yet they Iray render. I've tried Insta Edit with the same results.
What/where am I missing?
Well, therein lies the rub. I started thinking that's what I needed to do.
This is the only clue...
But you're in the Stones objects; scroll further down the Scene tab for the trees. You could also run the camera script by mcasual that let's you hide trees in front of the camera or around the camera. Here is the link to that thread.
That's just the name of the environment so I know what I used. I toggled layers until I found where the offending trees were.
I also have & tried the script. I appears to work it that the trees I want to hide disappear from viewport in wireframe, but they still render.
Obviously something wasn't getting deleted or turned off. I say wasn't as I just took a shot-gun approach & turned off any tree and Proxy of that type with and 02 and 03 and hit upon it apparently. A few others got caught too so need to refine how to find the correct instance.
I'd post a resulting image but the forum is being extremely crotchity today.
Not getting Height map response
Would someone kindly test this. I haven't done any terrain mods for awhile and there's been an update or so, but I'm not getting ANY response when using an edited height map.
The maps for masking items in the build pannel are working, but nada for the terrain. I've tested different maps, inverted, etc. and absolutely no change when comparing renders.
Here's what I have for USC:
Your versions are current. I have no problem with terrain maps. Are you aware that the noise portion of the terrain definition also applies, in addition to the height map? If you want only the height map to affect the terrain, set the noise brightness to -100.
Ya, I tried that as well. Neut gray, full black, full white. Absolutely the same.
Might it be something with the Stones Features Set itself in that the geom is locked because of the stones? I'm using Stones7.
I'll test with a different set a bit later.
Features often modify part of the terrain but usually not the entire terrain. I see what you mean about the Stones 7 feature. It seems to completely control the terrain height and shape.
Thanks for confirming.
Well,... Armed with that info & a lot of I-really-don't-know-what-the-????-I'm-doing, I decided to try a bit of testing. I exported the terrain (and some of the noninstanced stones came along) out as OBJ. I did some simple massaging of a spot I'd already marked earlier to level it out some for the structure. I had to remember to NOT just save but to Export back out as an OBJ.
Anyway, after a few surface copy & pastings, & name and parent swapping, I managed to fool USC it seems & it cheerfully reran the script & used my new terraformed geometry.
As Mr Sulu might say: "Ooooo!" Opens some new posibilties.
Love the image Doc Acme! Interesting that you were able to export and still be able to run US on the imported terrain, will have to make note of that.
I have an issue this is US Crossing 1 and Woodland 4 ecology. I have tried everything to make the water look right. I double checked everything to make sure I did not get something out of position. I have changed the water color and the enviroment, even trying the Sun and Sky preset included with US, nothing works to make the water not look like it has a hard edge...
Quick question and forgive me for not reading all 34 pages yet in case my question is answered. The Ultrascenery sets that require Mossy Hollow and or etc; do they need to be installed in the same library? I have all my scripts in one library to make it easy to find and one library for plants. I do own Mossy Hollow and I own Ultrascenery. I was wanting to get the UltraScenery - Mossy Hollow and a few others.
I'm just looking at the Tango Alpha's wonderful Soggy Bottom set. How well does it integrate into US? There are some new plants I wouldn't mind having, and the trail is different. But part of me is saying I already have a pond (or 2) and US can do most of this already. (Sorry, Tango - but I have to ask. I'm spending more money collecting products than using them and if this is redundant, there's no point in getting it.)
Is getting a used laptop in the realm of possibility for you? That's what I did and it's my dedicated DIM device. DIM downloads a zip file and then I can copy it on to a flash drive to transfer it to my desktop. And the manual install process isn't complicated.
Yes, they do have to be in the same library/folder/directory. Incidentally, it's a bad idea to move .duf files around if Ultrascenery wants them. They should be installed as is.
If you haven't got them already and your budget will run to it, you should invest in the non-Ultrascenery Mossy Hollow add-ons. They are well worth the money.
Cheers,
Alex.
This is SO cool, Doc! This is gorgeous! You had much better luck with hacking then I did with the Albert Mansion. I gave up and rendered on a totally flat terrain.
Thank you. I do buy as much Howie Farkes stuff as I can. I love his stuff.
Ideally yes. In practice...I really don't need or want another computer at home. A low spec laptop would drive me up the wall. It would only be used to download plugins. A tablet, in contrast to a low spec laptop, is fast to turn on, doesn't have MS Teams (or MS anything) to foul it up, doesn't have manufacturers bloatware introducing security holes, or anything like that. Then, the Laptop being used so rarely would spend a majority of its time downloading updates, and being a low spec thing would be virtually unable to respond to a cursor move until the updates were done - and experience suggests that would be hours after starting. My kids have had updates kill the battery management on their laptops (making them only work when plugged in) and every removed update gets reinstated next time -it makes you at the mercy of poor quality MS updates. It's needless agro I don't want. All in all, a desperately unattractive alternative, or maybe an alternative of desperation. Just not for me.
Thanks. I just did some smoothing so no changes to the geom that would change point count or order. That mdel of the Bates house is quite detailed.